I-Corps: Customer Interview and Discovery for a Revolutionary Electronic Lab Notebook

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This I-Corps team is working to revolutionize research methodology by removing redundancies in experimentation, creating a more collaborative environment, and securing intellectual property. Research capacity will increase as more scientists have time to take on larger tasks, thereby accelerating the pace of scientific discovery. Beyond efficiency issues, a gap has also been developing between handwritten systems and digital results. This team seeks to close that gap and create a seamless digital environment containing all pertinent experimental information and analytics. A digital mergence allows scientists to quickly access research archives and avoids hours of manual searching through notebook stacks. Billions of dollars are wasted on resources, time, and organization required for paper lab notebook maintenance. The proposed system, Labii ELN, creates a digital environment to organize and simplify research. This team will take a one of a kind approach and utilize protocol templates for ceasing all repetitive behaviors, templating them the first time for easy reuse. The proposed technology will allow users to create protocol templates (root) followed by branched experimental documents (nodes), which are composed of variable fields that are altered during experimentation. This means less information is worked with and requires inputting. The connection between roots and nodes allows for novel features like Summary Analysis. The team's current commercialization plan will start with targeting wet lab researchers. On the academic side, the team will start with Universities in the bay area (Stanford University, UC Berkeley,UCSF). In industry, the team will target small and medium size biomedical and pharmaceutical companies. Once beta testing is completed and the team has added features recommended by customers, this I-Corps will seek nationwide adoption.